Deelish Dish

sweet, sweet victory

So guess what, peeps? I have some brag-worthy news for you. Two things: A) I made some muy delicioso strawberry-peach jam. And B) My child now sleeps through the night. 

Did you read that? Through the night. As in, eight consecutive hours of peace for the whole family. Thank you, thank you, sleep training gods. It was nine days of sleep-deprived-hallucinatory-constant-verge-of-tears-guilt-ridden torture but alas, it was worth it. Daytime naps are a cinch and I even feel confident that I can leave for a moms' night out. The faint sweet smell of my old life is in the air and mmmm, it's intoxicating.

On top of this victory, I also conquered some peaches and strawberries. Together, in one jar. And oh my goooodness, my genius knows no boundaries. A peach-perfect pairing. (I'm a loser.)

They aren't the best photos and the process was also not the best documented of all time but take my word for it: capitalize on the summer now and get jamming. Hit the Farmers Market and find the best deal—negotiating towards closing time works wonders. Then grab your supplies, an apron, turn off the phone and the music on, and get working. Neighbors and Christmas-gift-receivers alike will be so thankful you did.

If you decide you can part with a few jars. I don't blame you if you can't.

cranberry oat scones

Scone virgin no more! I can officially cross them off my list of baking accomplishments. Well, maybe accomplishment is not the right word. They were deliciously tasty but a bit amorphous and, if you want full disclosure, boring. 

And I say boring because I think all scones are boring, which is probably why it's taken me until now to make some. I was tempted to jazz things up with some chocolate chips because I think chocolate brings the party to everything, but I guess some morning pastries should be on the less sweet side. For those people with a conscience.

And for the boring-scone-loving folks, these are for you. Flaky, oaty, with a tang of chewy cranberry in every bite, they've got a moist, buttery crumb that just melts in your mouth.

You don't want to be dipping them in your coffee...or hell, maybe you do. 

his & hers bread pudding

I hate wasting food. A big beef roast on Sunday night means I'll be eating steak sandwiches for a week. Too many bananas turning brown means we'll be having banana bread with our afternoon tea. And bread gone stale means the warm smell of cinnamon and nutmeg drifting from the oven: bread pudding. The most delicious form of leftovers yet.

Marrying a Scotsman requires knowing how to make a good bread pudding. It's a staple for them; every woman has her trusty recipe. A few trips back, my mother-in-law made her own "bread and butter pudding", as she called it, whipped up in seconds and left to soak the entire day.

It was amazing and, I think, an intimidation tactic. Her question of "Do you know how to make bread pudding?" was meant to be read as "Do you want to marry my son?" Ha...hee...gulp. No one told me the key to a happy marriage would be the ability to replicate his mother's cooking.

There is only one little problem when it comes to my baking of bread pudding...I hate raisins. Knowing that it's more than sacrilegious to take out raisins from the traditional recipe, I came up with my own solution.

Half dried cranberries, half raisins! His and hers bread pudding! G-g-g-genius.

If I were to make a batch for solely myself I would have swapped it all for chocolate chips, but that's just preposterous. And a world only I live in. A chocolate-crazed, over-indulgent, delicious world. 

So we scooped our pieces of pudding, dusted with a delicate snowfall of powdered sugar. Me with my cranberry half, his with his raisins. Lovah devoured the bowl in silence, licked his lips and said, "Mmm, that was just like Mum's."

yellow cake + chocolate frosting = my kryptonite

Do you have a food vice? A really serious one? One so bad that it could single-handedly bring you down if you let it? I'm talking the kind of thing you won't even think of buying because if you did, it would not make it to the pantry shelves but become wholly devoured within seconds of leaving the market. If they're lucky!

Insert me with a blurred face on A&E's Intervention: "Hi, my name is Anja, A-n-j-a, and I'm addicted to yellow cake with chocolate frosting."

I'm not kidding, the stuff truly is my kryptonite. In layer, bundt, cupcake, batter form...I don't discriminate. But it has to be yellow—not vanilla or white!—and it has to have chocolate frosting. 

If you make chocolate cupcakes, I'll eat them, sure. If you make vanilla ones, I'll pick and nibble. If you go the ungodly route and make yellow with chocolate, you're forcing me to eat 5-6 in one sitting. It's a problem.

My family knows what to make come birthday month. My old coworkers whipped one up for my baby shower. And if it's your birthday and I made one for you, you'll know that it wasn't really for you. You were just a pawn in my game of indulgence. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

And that's just what happened last week, when I made about 25 of these babies for a friend's birthday. Funny thing is, she got a tupperware container of about 8. Where did the rest go?

the everything-in-your-fridge salad

I love salad. My general dinner rule is there must be something green on the plate and, nine times out of ten, it's salad. The key to loving salad is knowing how to make a good one. I hate when people say they don't like salad. They just haven't had a good one yet.

The nightly cooking ritual is as follows: Lovah is in charge of the "meat" (chicken, steak, fish, etc), while I'm in charge of the sides (salad, rice, couscous, roasted veggies, etc). And most nights, I end up with a salad that looks like this. How? I throw some romaine in a bowl and top it with everything I can find from the fridge. The usual suspects: tomatoes, carrots, apples and sunflower seeds. If we're lucky, there might also be some crumbled cheese, pickled beets, snap peas, sweet peppers, and dried cranberries. 

When Lovah happens to be working late or traveling and I know I'll be having a solo dinner, I plan a monster salad. I can pile on the goat cheese (which he thinks tastes like dirty socks), make my homemade vinaigrette extra garlicky (recipe coming soon!), and put all the fruit I want in it. Lovah used to say that fruit doesn't belong on salad but I've tricked him into liking apples, pears, even strawberries. Pretty soon I'll slip in some blood oranges—he won't know what hit him.

Last night happened to be a solo meal featuring one of my five-star salads. Give me one giant colorful bowl of fixins topped with baked chicken and drenched in balsamic vinegar, a glass of Merlot, the remote control, a sleeping baby, and an Audrey Tautou flick....

little miss strawberry shortcake

So remember when I told you I have a favorite go-to, non-chocolate dessert? Well, I must have been on something at the time because, duh, I have three. And I don't want any of them to think I have favorites; I love them equally. (I always used to ask my mother which child she liked the most and she never did answer. When my future second child asks me I'll say, "Your brother, stupid." Kids need tough love.) In addition to rice pudding, they've got to be banoffee pie and strawberry shortcake.

Rice pudding because it reminds me of college. Banoffee because it reminds me of Lovah and Scotland. And strawberry shortcake because it has my mother written all over it. 

You foodie gurus can flaunt your homemade scratch biscuits—and I do give you brownie points for the extra effort—but I am all about the old-fashioned, tried and true, from-the-big-yellow-box Bisquick. You can make me try recipes and taste test six ways to Sunday but I will always come back to it. Some things are just better left perfect.

Every year, as it gets closer to summer and strawberries come into season, my mother will find an excuse to make strawberry shortcake. BBQs, birthdays, Sunday brunch—hell, you just have to show her some strawberries and she'll run to the mixer to start the whipped cream. And I love the woman for it. The summer of seventh grade I was sick in bed with strep throat, could hardly eat buttered toast or chicken noodle soup, yet managed to wolf down a tower of it, after she delivered some to my bedside in the middle of a dinner party. I could barely taste it but the memory still stands out in my mind.

DD & a Movie: The Ghost & Mrs. Muir

Herein begins another new feature that I am excited to finally start. Dinner and a movie, Deelish Dish style! Do you guys remember TBS' Dinner & a Movie that played on Friday nights back in the day? You know..."Beans and cornbread, doo doo dooo." (I always thought it was "Peas and cornflakes", ha.) Well I guess it's still on, though without the same hosts and all the pizzazz I remember from the mid-nineties. As a kid, this show was my Friday night. A classic favorite film played and discussed while the (uber-dorky) hosts cooked a meal with a coordinating title and related theme. Beetlejuice and "Dearly Departed Sole", for example, or When Harry Met Sally and "What Am I, Chopped Liver?" Brills, just brills.

We're going to do the same thing here, on Deelish Dish & a Movie, or, DD & a Movie. We'll be making all sorts of things...entrees, apps, drinks, desserts, you name it. The pick may be featured in the film, have some relation to the title or plot, or just seem like a natural pairing (this is my game, I make the rules). I'll pick a favorite, pop it in the DVD player, and cook up something to munch on while enjoying the flick. So, you ready?

Up first...The Ghost & Mrs. Muir! And just in time as it's raining here in the Bay Area for what will probably be the last time before summer, and I'm cozying up on the couch. This movie, introduced to me by my cousin, introduced to her by our nana, is naptime gold. The moody music, the blustery cliffside scenes, the soothing classic black-and-white images of candlesticks, haunted cottages, and daytime snoozes under weighty quilts with warm milk, will make anyone's eyelids fall deliciously heavy....the opening credits alone have a Pavlovian effect on my cousin. I tease her that she needs to make it to the first line of dialogue before she is allowed to pass out.

The story centers around Lucy, a recently widowed mother who moves into a haunted cottage and strikes up a unique relationship with the house ghost: grumpy former sea captain, Captain Gregg. In one of the first scenes, she goes to the local real estate office to find a—what turns out to be haunted—house, whereupon the owner, Mr. Coombs, tries to dissuade her from choosing Gull Cottage. Her entrance finds him at his desk, napkin tucked at the collar, salting and eating a hard boiled egg. How perfectly British, I know. And every time I watch this movie, I want to eat that egg.

I rarely eat hard boiled eggs, but how good does a slightly warm one with a dash of salt sound? With some tea maybe? On the couch, on a cold, rainy day? Zzzzzzzzzzz. I'm sorry, what? I dozed off for a second.

Watch this ever-cozy, ever-romantic classic and put a pot of water on. It will make you want to move to the seaside, plant a monkey puzzle tree, fall in love with a ghost, and eat some hard boiled eggs. Every time.

Some juicy bits of GAMM movie trivia....did you know:

This is one of the few films by 20th Century Fox that does not use the opening trumpets, and instead, plays that beautiful score (that lulls us all into dreamland...).

The cliffside shots are supposed to be England but were actually filmed in Carmel, California.

don't talk to me before i've had my coffee

Do you have a morning routine? One that is so detailed and necessary, that were you to diverge from it, your day would spiral into a frazzled, harebrained, did-i-even-remember-to-put-on-pants Bridget Jones episode? I have major routines and ceremonies that I neurotically follow throughout the day, akin to the life of Sally Albright. My mornings go something like this:

Wake up at 7am, change and nurse the baby, make a pot of coffee and throw a piece of wheat bread in the toaster. Find the unhealthy peanut butter in the cabinet and pull out the old-fashioned oats. Once the coffee beeps (but usually even before then), gulp a cup while standing at the counter, then refill. Drink another cup with peanut butter toast in the other hand, while I microwave a big bowl of oatmeal. Slice fresh strawberries and bananas over the oatmeal while still hot, and bring to the living room with my coffee. I then turn on the news and open my laptop to catch up on happenings in the world and the blogosphere. After this leisurely wake-up, I see Lovah out the door and hit the showers...

maybe i was a little rough on that jamie oliver

You gotta hand it to that goofy bastard, he knows how to serve up some classic British cuisine. I can hardly stand to watch him talk (I googled the SNL spoof of him to no avail but trust me on this) but his steak and guinness recipe and new Food Revolution show together take him up a notch in my book. Plus, he has three daughters named Poppy, Daisy, and Petal. That's about the cutest thing I've ever heard.

He's the talk show foodie equivalent of Rachael Ray and, I'm sorry, you're all going to hate me, but she just kiiiiillllls me too. I'll look up her recipes but don't make me watch her show. She makes me squirm.

I realize, though, that in the past few days I've heard myself telling people how much I like Simon Cowell and Anna Wintour. So maybe I'm just mean. Cuz I seem to like meanies.

Back to steak pie! This recipe was amaaazeballs. So warm and cozy with peas and red wine on a brisk night in front of the tele. And the puff pastry! On top and bottom! Just divoooon.

The whole dish was a last minute throw-together after I emailed Lovah about dinner plans. "Crockpot?" "How about steak pie?" "Steak whaa?" He must be homesick. If he requests steak pie it means we'll also be watching Fawlty Towers and having a cheese-and-biscuits supper.

I always thought supper was another word for dinner, but no, it's a post-dinner dinner. Those Brits think of everything.

meet the blogger: saskatch

(A quintessential portrait of the Saskatchian species)

Somebody open the vino, pull out the chocolate reserves, and put all cameras away...Saskatch has been sighted. I am so excited to finally introduce you to one of my favorite gals on the planet. Ignore the fact that we're related (mother's sister married father's brother, so carry the one, subtract the incest, and voila! Double cousins!), this girl is hilarity in its purest form. Polite and professional magazine editor by day, Bridget Jones-disaster-waiting-to-happen by...err...the rest of the time, her reality never sees a dull moment. See here and here for proof. And if you get caught halfway through a sentence and don't know what she's talking about, it's probably a movie reference. We both tend to do this, and while some might call it a freakish tic, we call it an art form. I know, right? We are so MFEO.

Okay, first off, what inspired the start of your blog, Saskatch?

Some people call me Katch (much to my mother's chagrin). One fateful day at a Christmas tree farm, I was skulking through Douglas Firs and the name was born.

Your stories of travel get me almost as much as your Bridget Jones gaffes...what has been your favorite travel destination?

Kenya was an absolutely life-changing experience. Although, by the end of the trip, my guide, Tonie, was well versed in my lack of peripheral vision and knack for getting into sticky situations. One day, Tonie, two horseback riding guides (who spoke zero English), and I went for a safari on horseback at the foot of Mount Kenya. I was a little uneasy as they pointed out elephant dung (hello? Did you hear about that woman who was trampled by a rogue elephant at that very spot?! Of course, our guides would speak in Swahili and Tonie would translate, but for all I knew they were saying, "We are in grave danger of being eaten by lions or stampeded by elephants. No matter, onward!"). We encountered a water buffalo (funny looking animals with horns that resemble a '50s flip-do)...another stampede-happy animal that could easily kill you with its coifed horns. As I grabbed my camera to snap a shot of the buffalo, my horse shifted and my sunglasses fell off my face—I jerked forward to grab them and nearly fell off the horse. Tonie later told me he's never lost a tourist to an animal attack, but he was sure I was about to be the first—offed in the name of designer eyewear. That said, I also LOVED Las Ventanas in Mexico. My boyfriend and I were spoiled beyond belief—it took weeks to get over saying farewell to our personal butler. Or was that a tequila-induced dream?

And funniest (well, funny NOW) faux-pas?

Oh dear. Just yesterday, I had planned to go on a bike ride, but at the last minute decided to run instead. After jogging awhile, I realized I hadn't changed out of my biking pants—you know, the kind with a padded bum. As I was running and realizing that I looked silly, my foot caught on a tree trunk and I FLEW. I ripped my bubble-butt pants, gashed my knee, but popped up like nothing happened and hobbled the rest of the way home. One of my most memorable Bridget moments (or least memorable, depending on how you look at it)...As a co-ed at UC Santa Barbara (nearly a DECADE ago, god help me), I was the neighborhood margarita maker—I'd squeeze limes and blend made-to-order drinks until my fingers pruned and I tossed bottles around ala Tom Cruise in Cocktail. One time, my roommates and I threw a huge jungle-boogie bash, and I got to work mixing drinks early. I wanted our jungle juice to be extra tasty, so I sipped and sipped until I got it right. I awoke the next morning to find that I was still dressed as Jane of the jungle—my body paint untouched and the twigs in my hair coifed to a tee—with no memory of the party. Had I blacked out? Drank too much? My roommates informed me that I was sawing logs in bed before the first guests arrived. I hear it was our best party ever.

What's in  your purse?

Funny you should ask. My boyfriend recently stumped me with the same question (although his was more like, "What the hell do you keep in there?"), so I dug around to see what I lug around all day. Currently: a Moleskin calendar book (with lists of my wishes and dreams—one cheese pizza just for me!), Caudelie Beauty Elixir, a broken wallet (it's cute so I just hold it shut when I use it), minty fresh CO Bigelow lip gloss, a red cell phone (verizon salespeople are persuasive), and my favorite jewelry pieces (I like to change earrings according to my mood).

More importantly, what's in your fridge?

White wine (even though I prefer red. Who am I to judge my Trader Joe's impulses?), half-and-half for coffee, orange flavored sparkling water, Greek yogurt, eggs, and spinach.

I think I know the answer to this but...name your drug: cheese or chocolate? Caffeine or alcohol?

All of the above? I've grown to love cheese, but only if it's not too stinky-feet-esque. Chocolate and I have carried on a committed relationship for years—fraught with challenges and occasional heartbreak, of course. I don't think I could leave chocolate forever, but my mood after a binge is not pretty. So, that leaves me with caffeine and alcohol. Since it would be inappropriate to go on a "wine run" while at work, I suppose I am most devoted to coffee. But mama loves herself a nice tumbler of cabernet. Why must I choose? WHY?

You're all about the cozy but also the sun...what season do you look forward to most?

Definitely autumn—crunchy fallen leaves, Felicity sweaters, Halloween, and the anticipation of Christmas...almost too much to handle! Although, I happen to be writing this on a gorgeous 80-degree Santa Barbara spring day, so I must add that summer is a close second. The smell of jasmine in the air, barbecues, blackberry pie, farmers market, long beach days, and warm ocean water...